WESTSIDE / COVER STORY : At a Watershed : As the Hyperion Treatment Plant undergoes another major expansion, environmentalists and their foes wage a national-level tug-of-war.

John Crosse steered his city-owned car along a narrow, twisting ridge in Playa del Rey.

To the east the land leveled off, affording a view of a neat, wood-fenced El Segundo neighborhood. But in the opposite direction, just inches away from the wheels of Crosse’s car, the bluff dropped several hundred feet to a sprawling and not-so-bucolic construction site: the Hyperion Treatment Plant.

“The whole plant’s a war zone,” said Crosse, Hyperion’s plant manager, referring to the massive excavations and steel-rod skeletons that are gradually changing both the appearance and the environmental impact of the 150-acre facility.

Owned and operated by the city of Los Angeles, Hyperion is undergoing its second major expansion since 1950.

The $1.6-billion upgrade finds Hyperion at a crossroads. The city embarked on the project in 1991 to enable Hyperion--which now receives 330 million gallons of raw sewage per day--to provide advanced treatment of all waste water discharged into Santa Monica Bay.

Yet in recent months the effort, required by federal law, has become overshadowed by a national-level tug-of-war between environmentalists and their anti-regulatory opponents. The Republican-controlled Congress is considering relaxing the federal Clean Water Act, possibly so it no longer would require advanced treatment.

Environmentalists worry that a regulatory rollback could reverse years of progress in cleaning up water bodies like Santa Monica Bay, which in recent years has shown signs of recovering from decades of raw sewage disposal.

Bob Sulnick, executive director of the American Oceans Campaign, argues that the success of tougher regulations has made environmental problems seem remote to many of today’s leaders. “This new generation of politicians . . . (doesn’t) have an understanding of how serious the breakdown in the ecosystem” was during the 1970s and ‘80s, Sulnick said.

But critics claim advanced sewage treatment is unnecessary on environmental grounds, given how much progress has been made in cleaning up the bay.

They also call it too costly. The city is funding Hyperion’s expansion through a sewer service charge, which appears on homeowners’ water bills and has soared 238% since 1987, according to the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. For the average homeowner, that charge now stands at $20 a month.

“The cost-benefit view (of the environment) is coming more to the foreground” of public policy, said Scott Farrow, senior economist at Dames & Moore, a Los Angeles-based environmental consulting firm. Farrow estimates that the United States spends $150 billion a year, or 2 1/2% of its gross domestic product, on improving the environment.

“Would (that money) be better spent on earlier schooling, health issues or crime prevention?” Farrow asked.

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Over the past 45 years, the level of sewage treatment at Hyperion has been a bellwether for the local debate between economics and the environment. When it opened, Hyperion offered advanced treatment of waste water discharged into the ocean. But as the local population--and sewage costs--soared throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the city of Los Angeles backed away from advanced treatment, and Hyperion began spewing raw sewage and sludge miles off the coast.

Hyperion, which serves the central Los Angeles area, is by far the largest of the four sewage treatment plants operated by the city of Los Angeles. The Terminal Island Treatment Plant provides advanced treatment of waste water for the Los Angeles Harbor area. The Donald C. Tillman and Glendale-Burbank water reclamation plants serve the San Fernando Valley.

Because Hyperion currently provides advanced treatment of only about half the waste water it discharges into Santa Monica Bay, its operations have come under heavy scrutiny from environmentalists.

Crosse, a mild-mannered civil engineer who has managed Hyperion since 1990, keeps a stack of charts in his office outlining the treatment process. Using a pointer, he leads a visitor through the graphics with the unflappable patience of someone accustomed to explaining a complicated scientific subject.

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The average person contributes 75 to 100 gallons of waste water per day, through toilet flushes, showers, dishwashers, running taps and so on. By the time the sewage reaches Hyperion--courtesy of 6,500 miles of mainline sewers--it has congealed into a dark gray liquid, Crosse said.

At Hyperion, this unsavory stew is first pumped through bar screens that remove bits of lumber, plastic and other objects that could damage plant equipment. When Hyperion first opened, with a single, mission-style building in 1925, this was about as far as the treatment process went.

Workers then add ferrite chloride, a chemical compound that helps remove solids and reduce unpleasant odors. Crosse said El Segundo neighbors still complain about the smell, particularly when they return home in the evening, though the situation has improved in recent years.

“After the chemical addition, the waste water still has hydrogen sulfide (which is responsible for) that rotten-egg odor or organic smell neighbors complain about,” Crosse said. “But it would be much worse if we didn’t add the ferrite chloride.”

Sand and grit, settling to the bottom of the tanks, are removed. Then the remaining sewage is pumped into a covered tank for what is referred to as primary treatment. In this phase, waste water is filtered through a sedimentation tank, where solids settle to the bottom or are skimmed from the top.

Before 1986, Crosse said, Hyperion was removing only about 60% of solids during this phase. But with the addition of new chemicals, the record has improved to about 85%, he said.

The removed solids become sludge, a smelly black soup that spends 16 days concentrating and drying in digestion and centrifuge tanks. Until 1987, the city of Los Angeles was pumping untreated sludge about seven miles off the coast of Santa Monica, in what scientists agree was an ecological catastrophe.

Hyperion has since found new ways to dispose of sludge. Much of it is converted into methane gas or “sludge powder” and burned to generate electricity for the plant, Crosse said. Some dried-out sludge is used to make Topgro, a city-sponsored fertilizer available at local nurseries.

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The current controversy at Hyperion involves so-called secondary treatment, in which the remaining solids are oxygenated, converted into bacteria and then removed. Visitors can see part of this process in action at the plant’s 300-foot-long uncovered aeration tanks, a witch’s brew of bubbles and foam.

Currently, about half of the waste water at Hyperion receives secondary treatment. The effort to upgrade the plant so it can provide such treatment for all its sewage would result in what is known as “full secondary” treatment.

The current construction project will enable Hyperion to improve the quality of sewage treatment, including building covered aeration tanks, according to Crosse. This is important because in 1987 the city of Los Angeles--under pressure from environmental groups and federal agencies--committed to advanced treatment of all ocean-bound waste water by 1998.

“The move to full secondary is the driving force” behind the expansion, Crosse said.

Some politicians and scientists, however, wonder if the benefits of advanced treatment are worth the billions of dollars in expense.

U.S. Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach) introduced a bill that would relax requirements for advanced treatment of sewage discharged into Santa Monica Bay--and, officials say, save water customers in Los Angeles several hundred million dollars. The full House is expected to vote on the legislation soon, possibly as early as this week.

Until recently, Ron Deaton, the chief legislative analyst for the city of Los Angeles, was lobbying for the so-called Horn Amendment on the grounds that the city has a longstanding policy against “unfunded mandates”--federal or state requirements that saddle local communities with the expense of implementation. According to Deaton, the clean-water rules constitute such a mandate.

What especially concerned Deaton and others was that San Diego has for years been arguing for an exemption from stiffer sewage treatment rules. San Diego currently provides what it calls “advanced primary” treatment of sewage, which according to officials there removes nearly as large a percentage of solids from waste water as secondary treatment.

“My concern, and the city’s concern, was that we had spent a lot of money complying with the mandate, and other people haven’t,” Deaton said in an interview.

Deaton has stopped lobbying for the new legislation, apparently because of environmental and legal concerns raised by members of the Los Angeles City Council. But the issue is far from over. Scientists are also debating the necessity of full secondary treatment.

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Paul Dayton, a professor of oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, argues that San Diego’s “advanced primary” treatment has only minimal effects on a handful of marine species in a half-mile radius of the ocean floor where the waste water exits the sewage plant’s pipe.

Furthermore, the marine communities in Southern California are so “robust” that the waste water poses no serious threat to the worms, crustaceans and clams that live in them, he said.

“Full secondary may not be necessary (in Los Angeles); it’s certainly not necessary in San Diego,” Dayton said. “Ecologically, it’s insane to say (we need to) spend billions of dollars for one-half to two miles of crustaceans. These animals are extremely abundant. . . . This is not an ecologically serious problem in Southern California.”

An aide to Rep. Horn said the congressman drafted the provision because current clean-water rules have cost the city and Los Angeles County hundreds of millions of dollars and do not help the environment. Horn himself was not available for comment, aides said.

Yet some of Horn’s colleagues in the House remain unconvinced that the clean-water rules should be changed.

“Horn’s attempt to create an equal playing field between Los Angeles and San Diego is a good idea with a bad result,” said Rep. Jane Harman, a Democrat whose 36th District includes Hyperion. “A better idea is to have San Diego meet the standards rather than have Los Angeles receive a waiver.

“The problem,” she continued, “is that Los Angeles has already spent $2 billion on sewage upgrades. . . . It seems crazy, just crazy, to go backwards.”

Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson, a Democrat whose district includes Malibu, also plans to oppose the Horn legislation because it might adversely affect water quality in Santa Monica Bay, an aide said.

“How do you put a price tag on clean water?” asked Roger Gorke, staff scientist for the environmental group Heal the Bay. “How do you put a price tag, a dollar amount, on good health?”

Gorke views Deaton’s economic arguments as specious, because much of the cost of advanced treatment is offset by the hundreds of millions of dollars the city earns from tourists who enjoy clean beaches and ocean sports.

He also took issue with Dayton’s stand that full secondary treatment is environmentally unnecessary.

“In San Diego, their sewer system is the same as the city of Los Angeles’ 10 years ago,” Gorke said. “They have frequent sewer leaks and breaks, and then all the bacteria comes back to shore.”

Hyperion’s growing commitment to full secondary treatment, Gorke argues, has lead to “a more balanced indigenous population around sewage outfalls.”

John Dorsey, a manager of environmental monitoring at the city Bureau of Sanitation, says that marine communities have revived considerably since Hyperion stopped dumping sludge in the ocean in 1987, but the ecosystem is not yet back to normal. Would full secondary treatment help?

“It certainly wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “The more solids we get out, the better it gets.”

But the controversy will probably persist, as voters all over Southern California continue to weigh the cost of cleaning up the environment with the potential benefits. Mindful of consumer outrage over high water bills, the city has been working to cut staff and funding for the day-to-day operation and maintenance of Hyperion and other waste water facilities.

Hyperion’s anticipated budget for 1995-96, recently submitted to City Hall, is about $60 million, according to the Board of Public Works. That’s down over 30% from $86.1 million four years ago.

“We have received much encouragement from the mayor’s office to reduce our budget,” said J. P. Ellman, president of the Board of Public Works.

There are, as yet, no plans to halt or slow down the construction at Hyperion.

In fact, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, whose 6th District includes Hyperion, said that in supporting the Horn Amendment, city lobbyists were merely trying to ensure that San Diego did not evade the same clean-water requirements Los Angeles faces.

“The city hasn’t backed away from its commitment to clean water,” Galanter said. “This is the only ocean we’ve got.”

The plant recently broke ground on a $73-million environmental monitoring facility. And the city will probably award its last major construction contract for the plant expansion in the next several weeks, according to Ellman.

“The people of Los Angeles have sent a loud, clear message,” Ellman said. “From Santa Monica Bay to San Pedro, they want good quality water. . . . And we are doing that.”

Yet many worry that, without continued vigilance, the city may yet back away from its commitments to clean water. Mark Gold, executive director of Heal the Bay, said he found the city’s lobbying efforts on behalf of the Horn legislation “incredibly disturbing.” He added that his group is mounting a letter-writing blitz to keep the pressure on lawmakers, the city and the Clinton Administration.

“The (current) Clean Water Act is one of the most effective, well-crafted pieces of environmental legislation we have,” Gold said. But “there’s a change in the tenor of government right now. . . . Congressmen are putting in whatever will save taxpayers money without any idea of whether the legislation is good or bad.”

For his part, Crosse, the Hyperion manager, has more immediate concerns--namely, the massive project that is literally transforming the sprawling seaside plant.

“The whole construction process,” Crosse said, escorting a visitor around the seemingly endless construction site one recent afternoon, “is like undergoing open-heart surgery.”